


wear you like a necklace

by ferryboatpeak



Category: Dunkirk (2017) RPF, Harry Styles (Musician), One Direction (Band)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Au Pair, Boss/Employee Relationship, Colin the dog, Cunnilingus, France (Country), M/M, Married Couple, Masturbation, Multi, Oral Sex, Power Imbalance, Summer, Threesome - F/M/M, lots of random and specific references to food, rich asshole harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-26 02:25:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15653841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferryboatpeak/pseuds/ferryboatpeak
Summary: Tom's got a nice summer arrangement with the Winstons, until their popstar houseguest shows up.





	wear you like a necklace

**Author's Note:**

> nicole, if you are reading this, which you are probably not, i profoundly apologize for taking your [charming French au pair premise](http://coldbam.tumblr.com/post/174290728367/so-au-where-toms-babysitting-in-the-south-of) and turning it into jealousy and possessiveness and winstyles filth.
> 
> massive thank-you to [lunarrua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarrua/pseuds/Lunarrua) for the beta
> 
> title from t. swift's _so it goes_ ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

As he crosses the terrace to the side door, Tom ignores the sloshing from the pool behind the house. The painted wood of the old door is swollen in the summer heat, warm and resistant under Tom’s bare shoulder as he leans in to ease it open. Colin doesn’t stir when the door unsticks with a muted creak of protest. He’s splayed out like a curly rug on the white oak floor at the corner between the kitchen and the dining room, discerned by some canine calculation to be the coolest spot in the house. At the start of the summer, he’d barked and pawed at Tom whenever he came in, but now he’s well used to Tom’s regular path of travel to and from the tiny apartment over the carriage house.

Tom steps over the dog and into the kitchen. Uneven ribbons of light crinkle across a slanted patch of the ceiling, reflected from the pool through the open top half of the dutch door. Tom stays clear of the view into the garden. Harry’s the only other person here today — the only person who could possibly be in the pool — and Tom’s not going to give him the satisfaction of looking out the window.

He turns toward the sink instead, and to the battered colander of raspberries drying on the countertop beside it. The berries are so ripe they almost disintegrate when Tom tries to scoop a few into his hand. He tosses them into his mouth and licks the smear of floral-tasting juice from the side of his finger. Meredith must have washed them for Ruby before they left this morning, and forgotten to put them away.

“You’re overdue for a day off,” she’d told Tom over the dinner table when they announced their plans to see friends in the city this weekend. Then she’d turned to Harry. “I’m so sorry we’ve got to be away while you’re here. You could come with…?” she’d added, trailing off at the end in a way that made the invitation sound less than wholehearted.

“Think I’ll stick around here,” Harry’d said, leaning back in his chair. Tom looked away then, reaching for his wineglass, but Harry’s smirk was audible when he added, “I can amuse myself.”

Tom rummages in the cupboard for a bowl and empties the berries into it, steadfastly ignoring the churn of Harry’s kicks outside. As he wipes up the wet circle where the colander sat, the splashing stops. It’s replaced by the sound of water sluicing onto the flagstones as Harry climbs out of the pool. Tom turns his back to the dutch door to deposit the berries in the refrigerator. Goosebumps rise on his arms when he opens the door. He lingers in the blast of icy air, staring too hard at a jar of cornichons, trying to make sense of the French on the label.

He slides a carton of yogurt noisily across the shelf when he hears the dutch door open. Head still in the refrigerator, he tilts open the lid on a dish of leftover roasted chicken and extracts a slice of breast meat, a strip of salty skin still clinging to its edge. Harry’s bare feet slap across the floor behind him all the way through the kitchen. Simultaneously relieved and irritated to be ignored, Tom turns around as Harry dodges Colin on his way out of the room, just in time to see the striped towel around his waist and the beads of water trailing down his back from the damp tangle of his hair.

Tom deposits the dish of chicken on the island countertop and crosses the room to look out the window as he chews. A trail of wet footprints on the flagstones gradually lightens as it approaches the kitchen door. The prints start at the edge of the pool, where Harry’s yellow swim trunks lay in a sodden heap, abandoned with a rich man’s confidence that somebody else will pick them up.

Tom’s not surprised to see the trunks left behind. He’s only surprised Harry had them on in the first place. Harry doesn’t generally bother. Tom’s learned to keep his back to the pool when he’s out on the lawn with Ruby, playing in the grass while the shade from the row of poplars at the edge of the garden still blocks the morning sun.

Today, the sun’s already midday-bright above the trees. On this rare morning off, Tom slept in and went for a run through the countryside, stretching it a couple of miles longer than he should have, easy to ignore fatigue amid the rolling landscape of poppies in the fields and grapes on the vines and dew melting off the grass at the edge of the road. He’d stretched his shower longer than necessary as well, without the hissing baby monitor on the bathroom counter threatening the end of Ruby’s nap. By the time he’d exhausted the hot water and toweled himself off, it was late enough to reasonably look for lunch, glancing sideways at his unopened laptop on his way downstairs and telling himself there’ll be plenty of time to work this afternoon.

A summer au pair job was supposed to be ideal for finishing up his masters’ thesis: his own living quarters in the French countryside, away from all distractions, nothing to do nights and weekends but write. But he hasn’t gotten as much work done as he should, and none at all since Harry’s arrived. Harry affects the atmosphere, makes it hard to concentrate. Like a storm blowing through, changing the air pressure all over the property, even if Tom’s above the carriage house and Harry’s in the guest suite down the hall from Ben and Meri’s room. Presumably.

Tom leans his elbows on the counter and slides another slice of chicken out of the dish. Harry’s out of sight, but it’s impossible not to focus on his presence. Each individual footstep up the stairs to the second floor feels like it’s knocking Tom’s pulse out of rhythm. He loves the house’s creaky wood floors — loves all of it, really, the sun-warmed stone walls and the whitewashed beams and the wooden shutters painted robin’s egg blue and the kitchen table with the long farmhouse benches — but right now he wishes the old house didn’t telegraph Harry’s movement quite so vividly. It’s hard enough to ignore him without a constant thudding reminder.

He waits for the footsteps to veer off into the guest suite at the top of the stairs, putting Harry on the opposite side of the house from him. When they keep going down the bare hallway floor instead of fading into the thick rug on the guest room floor, Tom tells himself he must have miscalculated. He looks up at the ceiling, as if he’ll be able to track Harry’s footfalls that way. But even if he could, they wouldn’t tell him anything that’s not already audible. There’s no mistaking that Harry’s past the guest suite and almost to the door of Ruby’s small bedroom. He can’t think of a thing Harry could do in there that wouldn’t create extra work for Tom somehow, but before he can get fully mad about it, Harry’s footsteps keep moving down the hall.

The chicken in Tom’s mouth goes dry. The only door left is the one to the master suite. The footsteps stop at the end of the hall, and Tom holds his breath and strains his ears as if he’s going to be able to hear the doorknob turn and the latch pull back against the plate. The door creaks open, and Harry’s footsteps, slower now, cross the threshold and stop right above Tom’s head in the middle of the bedroom.

Tom forces down his mouthful of food. There’s no reason for Harry to be in there, carelessly strolling over what feels like sacred ground. The master suite’s a place Tom only goes when he’s invited. Which he hasn’t been lately, not since Harry arrived.

Ben’s been home in the evenings more too, since Harry arrived. In the first half of the summer, he’d stayed late on set more often than not, leaving Tom and Meredith to informal dinners eaten standing up around the kitchen island, offering bits of tuna and green beans from their niçoise salads to Ruby in her tripp trapp chair. But Tom learned quickly to put the baby to bed well before sunset on the nights Ben came home early. With the last sleepy warbles fading away on the baby monitor, he’d come downstairs to Ben handing him a glass of wine, moving Tom out of the way with a hand to his hip so he could fill the ice bucket from the freezer. Dinner would be on the terrace in the honeyed evening light, ice melting around a second or third bottle of white, Meredith refilling Tom’s glass and touching his cheek with an cool hand and a warm “Don’t know how we’d manage this summer without you.” After sunset, little invitations — to kiss Meredith, to be touched by Ben — ripened into nights where Tom’s laptop sat dark, thesis untouched, in the empty carriage house.

Since Harry showed up a week ago, Tom’s come downstairs to Harry making cocktails for himself and Ben, shuffling through motown and soul on his phone, dancing with Meri in the kitchen. In a small way, Tom’s prided himself on fitting into the routines of his employers, on anticipating and delivering before they’ve even realized what’s needed. But Harry makes his own routines, the ones that suit him, and drags everyone else along behind. Dinner’s later and more of a production every night, with the lanterns lit on the trellis and candles on the table and Harry’s screeching ostrich laugh echoing off the flagstones long after Tom’s excused himself and gone up to his room.

Tom closes up the dish of chicken and returns it to the fridge. With the back of his wrist, he lifts the tap on the gooseneck faucet in the wide limestone sink. He washes his hands slowly and meditatively as he listens for more footsteps above, scraping his left thumbnail under each of the nails on his right hand to get at the traces of chicken grease or raspberry juice. The bar in the pottery soap dish smells of lavender, and the thin flour sack towel leaves his hands still damp. Tom rubs them against the sides of his cargo shorts. Harry’s still in Ben and Meri’s room.

This isn’t his job. He’s an au pair, not security. It’s none of his business if Ben and Meri’s aggravating houseguest wants to have a rummage around. Harry’s got privileges Tom doesn’t.

Tom starts toward the stairs anyway.

Harry can hear the floorboards just as well as Tom could, although maybe he cares less. Tom trods deliberately on each step anyway, giving Harry an out. When he pauses at the top of the stairs, everything is quiet. Sunlight speckles the floor at the far end of the hallway, filtering through the strands of ivy that trail over the window. Maybe Harry will walk out of the bedroom, make some cocky excuse for being in there, spare Tom this confrontation. He’ll come out wearing one of Ben’s worn grey t-shirts and tell Tom he’s been raiding the closet, like he owns the place.

He probably could own it, if he wanted to. Tom’s vaguely aware that Harry’s some kind of popstar, staying with his old friends after finishing his first world tour. But googling him to learn more seems like a victory Harry hasn’t earned. Tom’s mostly unplugged this summer anyway, preserving the illusion that this summer house is a self-contained world with its own set of rules, unaffected by what may be going on outside.

That was working well before the outside world crashed the gates in the form of Harry’s dark-windowed car, sitting in the gravel drive like a black hole against the hedge. Tom can’t even imagine what it might cost to procure a car like that in a foreign country, just so it can sit in the driveway while Harry swims laps and suns his lean body by the pool and planks for what seems like hours a time. He hasn’t left the property once.

The too-sweet scent of Harry’s cologne lingers heavily in the hallway outside the guest suite. Through the open door, Tom catches a glimpse of expensive luggage gaping on the floor. Vests and hoodies and a garish track jacket spew over the edges. A regiment of mysterious bottles and jarred candles spreads across the top of the dresser. Tom concentrates on keeping his steps even as he passes, to make it clear he’s not interested in any of it.

As he approaches the end of the hallway, he can hear Harry moving around in the bedroom. Harry can’t have missed his footsteps, not with the smack of Tom’s leather flip-flops even louder than Harry’s bare feet. The door to the master suite sits partly opened. There’s a striped towel abandoned in a heap just within Tom’s line of sight, like a warning flag. Or a breadcrumb.

Tom’s shoulders tighten, and he fights back the impulse to flee. He raps his knuckles sideways on the door, the sharpness settling the quiver in his hand. “What are you doing?”

Harry doesn’t answer. The door falls further open at Tom’s touch to reveal the rest of the bedroom. Harry’s by the bed, sweeping the white duvet into a messy heap at the foot of it. All Tom can see is thighs and ink and the heaviness of Harry’s cock, half-hard and bobbing as Harry unselfconsciously clambers onto the bed and scoots his back up against the padded headboard. He pushes the pillows out of the way on either side of him and smirks at Tom from the center of the bed. His tattoos are stark against the white sheets and the cream-colored headboard, and his half-dried curls and patchy stubble make him look all the more debauched. The sight hits Tom like a ray through a magnifying glass, a concentrated scorch aimed straight at his core.

“For fuck’s sake.” Tom jerks his head away, toward the window on the far side of the room. It’s not that he hasn’t seen Harry’s dick before. He hasn’t been able to avoid it, with Harry strutting around the pool in the mornings, walking like it’s leading the way. But he hasn’t seen it hard before, as big as Tom expected, forcing him to think with tongue-curling specificity about how it would feel in his hand, how it would fill his mouth. He swallows dryly, wishing he’d taken a drink to wash down the lingering taste of chicken.

The sheer curtain over the window ripples in the breeze. As it lifts, Tom focuses on the placid green hills in the distance. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

“Think I haven’t been in here before?” Harry’s tone is lazily condescending. Of course he’s been in here before. While Tom’s been lying awake over the carriage house, Harry’s been in this bed, on these sheets. Tom digs his fingernails into his palm, reminding himself that it’s none of his business. He just works here.

There’s movement out of the corner of his eye, the shift of white bedding. Tom stares resolutely out the window as his cock thickens in his baggy shorts. Being in this room, with its faint and intimate scent of Ben and Meri, is enough to turn him hungry, even without Harry spread out on the white sheets like he’s satiation. A feast from a fairy story, the kind you taste and lose years of your life.

“I’m covered,” Harry announces, smug and amused, as if his efforts at modesty are only to patronize Tom.

Tom looks over at the bed. Harry’s sitting with his knees up and a pillow pulled onto his lap. One tattooed forearm rests on top of it. His other arm is buried underneath. Harry holds Tom’s gaze while his unmarked bicep shifts perceptibly. Tom’s not meant to miss the slow strokes of his hand underneath the pillow.

During Tom’s first week at the country house, when its indolent pull hadn’t yet fully separated him from the demands of his thesis, he’d crept into the main house to make a midnight cup of tea. As he crossed the terrace to the kitchen door with his phone held up for light, its beam caught a flash of eyes. Tom froze at the sight of a fox crouched beneath the edge of the long plank table. They’d had dinner there a few hours ago, with Ben carrying a platter of lamb chops over from the grill and Meredith tossing arugula in a citrusy dressing. The realization that the fox was probably sniffing out baguette crumbs and the remains of Ruby’s scattered biscuit didn’t make the sight of a wild animal under the dinner table any less discordant. As Tom’s pulse raced, the fox stared haughtily back at him, unintimidated even though it was the one out of place. Harry has the same look to him. He’s an interloper from the wild against the crisp sheet and the quilted headboard, dangerous and beautiful and wrong.

Tom takes a measured breath, summoning the appropriate amount of scorn. “Get your dick off Ben’s pillow.” He relishes the specificity of the command, as if its precision gives him enough authority to evict Harry.

“Ben’s pillow?” Harry seizes the details and trips Tom with his own spear. One side of his mouth quirks up in a self-satisfied smile. “You’ve been in here too.”

Tom flushes, his fingernails digging into the wood of the door frame where he’s braced himself. He doesn’t bother to answer what wasn’t really a question.

“So concerned about Ben’s pillow.” Harry stretches out one of his legs, then tucks his ankle under the pillow. “Sorry to tell you it’s not the first time my dick’s touched the sheets.” Harry tips his head back against the headboard, opening up his throat. The pillow shifts in his lap with the concealed motion of his hand. He cocks his head to the side to look at Tom. “Come over here.”

He could shove Harry out of the center of the bed, out of the spot where Tom’s fallen asleep with his nose to Ben’s shoulder and Meri’s hand at his hip. He imagines Harry toppling over the edge of the mattress, ungainly limbs scrabbling for purchase on the sheet. If he thinks hard enough about Harry landing with a bruising thud on the floorboards, Tom can almost believe it’s the reason he’s crossing the room.

He focuses on Harry’s shoulder. It’s the only place of naked skin it seems safe to touch. He’s probably heavier than he looks, all muscle except for the pudgy bits at his hips. Tom flexes his fingers as he approaches the side of the bed, thinking about the force it’s going to take to move Harry. The king mattress seems suddenly vast, Harry too far away to catch by surprise, a distance too great to lunge past the knowledge that shoving his employers’ popstar houseguest out of their bed and onto the floor is not a reasonable plan.

Tom hesitates. Harry doesn’t. He rolls to the side to grab Tom by the top of his arm, thumb digging painfully into his armpit, and hauls him onto the bed. Tom gets a knee under himself just in time to avoid landing face-first on top of Harry. He freezes with his hands braced against the mattress, his feet hanging over the side of the bed, and adrenaline coursing down to his toes. Harry’s close enough to smell the sunscreen on his skin. His pillow’s been knocked askew, exposing the curve of his hip. The unbroken line from his torso to his ankle seems impossibly long.

“Now you’re here too,” Harry says broadly, as if Tom’s arrival is a delightful surprise, rather than an inevitability facilitated by Harry’s grip on his arm. “Still want me to leave?” Harry pointedly drags his gaze downward, where the bagginess of Tom’s shorts can’t conceal that Harry’s cocky exhibitionism and proprietary grip and maddening closeness have Tom frantically hard.

He hates that he wants this. He hates that Harry knows he wants this.

Harry drops his hand slowly, letting his thumb trace a shivery line down the inside of Tom’s arm. Tom uncurls his toes. His flip-flops succumb to gravity one after the other, sliding off of his feet and landing on the floor with two dull thuds. Harry doesn’t flinch.

Tom draws his feet under him and settles warily onto the bed. Harry collapses onto his back, letting the pillow fall uselessly to the side. Tom wants to look him over with dignified coolness, wants to take in every inch of Harry sprawled out with his cock pointing at the ceiling, but he’s not going to give Harry the satisfaction, not even now. Harry’s staring at him like it’s a contest, and Tom gives back every inch of unsettling eye contact. He’s winning, he tells himself, he’s got what it takes to win this. He doesn’t look away, not even when Harry reaches a hand down to casually stroke himself and Tom’s stomach clenches with want so intense it’s almost nausea.

“What have you been doing in here?” Harry’s voice is slow, sticky, the sound of sweat-tacky bodies moving against each other. Tom can hear the whisper of his palm on his cock.

Tom flops onto his back, out of Harry’s line of sight. “That’s none of your business.” All he’s got are his secrets, and he’s not going to give them up just because Harry’s got his dick out. He stretches his arms above his head, against the other pillow. Meri’s pillow. When he draws his feet back, his propped-up knees block the view.

Harry kicks Ben’s pillow toward the end of the bed and wiggles onto his side toward Tom. “Of course it’s not business,” he says, sounding pleased with himself. His knees nudge against Tom’s leg. Harry’s breath is hot against the underside of Tom’s arm when he adds, in an overdramatic whisper, “It’s pleasure.”

Tom turns his head to look witheringly at Harry. “That’s awful.” His face is close enough for Tom to pick out a crooked line of fading spots across his forehead.

“After hours, right?” Harry goes on as if Tom hasn’t said a thing. “Off the books?” His expression’s gleeful. “Or,” he adds, as if it just occurred to him, “is it actually your job?”

“I’m not telling you anything.” Tom forces himself to say it evenly. Harry’s just trying to get a rise out of him, unerringly digging his fingers into Tom’s buried uncertainties about what it means to be fucking the people who sign his paychecks, what it says that he likes it so much.

“Bet I can guess.” Harry’s voice gets lower, rougher, impossibly sounding even more like sex. He slides a hand under the hem of Tom’s vest, flat against his belly. His wrist brushes against Tom’s shorts, dragging over the spot where Tom’s cock strains against the fabric, as he ducks his head to breathe against Tom’s neck. “I bet I can suck your dick like Ben does.”

The shock of heat from Harry’s words crackles over Tom, coalescing where Harry’s hand burns against his skin. He can’t tell if it’s an offer or a trap. Or both. He rolls onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow so he’s looking down at Harry. “You don’t know shit about what Ben does.” It could be a challenge or a dismissal, but the way he’s stretched out almost chest to chest with Harry leaves Tom precious little room to claim the latter.

Harry catches the edge of his vest under his thumb and pushes it up Tom’s chest with his palm still flat, ploughing a burning furrow up Tom’s breastbone. The fabric reaches the limit it can stretch to, caught under his arm, and Harry stills his hand with his fingertips pressing into Tom’s collarbone. “I know how he sucks a cock,” Harry says, soft and searing. “I have —” he pauses, his lips inches away from Tom’s “ —some firsthand experience.”

Tom wants to meet the challenge of Harry’s stare, but his eyes drop irresistibly to Harry’s mouth instead. He pictures Harry’s lips parted, his eyes closed, spread out on this bed with his legs opened to Ben, the accuracy of Tom’s jealous suspicions confirmed. He pushes away the thought of what else Harry’s done with that mouth. It’s wider and pinker than a mouth should be, and Tom leans into the thought of what it it must feel like, how it must taste.

Tom falls back to tug his vest out from under him and over his head. Harry immediately shifts closer, aligning his torso flush against Tom’s, so much skin that Tom can barely breathe. Harry’s hand is at the button of Tom’s shorts, undoing it with insistent fingers and tugging awkwardly to part the zipper one-handed. He slides down Tom’s body to tuck his hands into either side of Tom’s waistband, fingernails against the ridges of his hipbones, and tips his chin up at Tom, waiting. There’s no decision to be made, only the unspooling of the consequences Tom set in motion as soon as he started up the stairway. He scrambles backwards, leaving his shorts and his boxers behind in Harry’s grip, and awkwardly kicks them from around his ankles as he sits up with his back against the headboard.

The pale quilting is cool against his bare skin. He realizes he’s in the same position Harry was a few minutes ago, knees drawn up just like Harry’s were and cock just as hard and wanting. Only Tom’s not an interloper, he tells himself. If Harry’s a fox, Tom ought to be a cat, owning his familiar spot in the center of the mattress with disdain for the claims of all others.

As Harry pushes Tom’s discarded clothes to the side of the bed and knees his way closer, Tom lets himself stare, taking in the lines of muscle tapering between Harry’s hipbones, the blotch of ink on his thigh like a bruise, all the narrow angles of his body. Harry preens like he’s accustomed to being watched, and Tom tries to keep his gaze cool. Harry’s the one on his knees but Tom can’t shake the sense that Harry’s got the upper hand all the same.

He spreads a hand over each of Tom’s knees, and Tom lets them fall open, trying not to shiver under the intensity of Harry’s appraisal. He’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe he’s not the size of Harry, but at least he’s not covered in so many tattoos he looks like the wall of a pub bathroom.

One corner of Harry’s mouth turns up. Tom resents the suggestion that he’s passed some sort of inspection, even as the idea of doing so satisfies him. The pressure of Harry’s thumbs at the inside of his knees is enough to send trails of sparks straight to Tom’s cock. Harry follows their path up his legs, an infuriatingly slow slide of his hands that stops when his thumb touches the last traces of a week-old bruise.

“Ben!” Harry says delightedly, and Tom fights the instinct to jerk his leg out of Harry’s hands. His body’s giving up Tom’s secrets, telling Harry exactly where Ben’s mouth was the night before Harry arrived. And, as Harry rubs his thumb over the mark, Tom relishes it. The faint purple-red bruise feels like a brand, a sign that he belongs here, in this house, in this bed. Or at least that he was here first.

Harry lowers his head and retraces his path up the inside of Tom’s thigh, this time with a concentrated drag of the tip of his tongue. He circles it around the fading mark and sucks the skin into his mouth. The sting of Harry’s teeth and the wet pressure of his mouth echo Ben’s so strongly that at first Tom thinks he’s trying to amplify Ben’s mark, affirm it. But Harry’s more likely trying to bury it, to superimpose his own ostentatious claim. It doesn’t matter; as Harry’s hand trails up his other leg and closes around his cock, Tom stops thinking about what anything means.

For a moment, the relief of Harry’s touch is heightened by its contrast to the sharpness of his mouth. Then Harry breaks the suction with a final flick of his tongue. Tom catches a glimpse of the spit-slicked red mark on his thigh before Harry covers it with his hand, pressing Tom’s leg open against the mattress. The heel of his palm digs into the blooming bruise, like Harry’s trying to hold it in place, remind Tom that it’s there.

Harry looks up at Tom from between his knees, and it’s an image Tom’s not likely to forget in this life or the next. His cock, held taut with Harry’s hand around the base, in front of Harry’s unfairly gorgeous face, the expression in his eyes smug and challenging.

“Let’s see it, then,” Tom says. It’s a struggle to seem unimpressed while all the blood in his body surges in Harry’s direction. His cock’s inches away from Harry’s parted lips. “Up to Ben’s standard?”

As if Harry was waiting for a reminder, he rolls the flat of his tongue once around the head of Tom’s cock and slides his unsettlingly pink lips all the way down the shaft without further preliminary. Tom closes his eyes against the overwhelm of Harry’s mouth enveloping him all at once. Harry’s faint vacation stubble lacks the tactile scrape of Ben’s beard, and Harry’s mouth is softer, all plush tongue. But the pressure and the rhythm are uncannily familiar. Ben’s like this, efficient and almost businesslike in a way that’s devastatingly compelling, always deducing the most direct path to Tom’s orgasm.

Harry’s pulling Tom down that same path now, and Tom resists with everything he’s got. He comes quick for Ben, always, giving Ben the satisfaction of authority exercised well. It would feel upside-down to make Ben work for it.

Harry, though. Harry, who’s been lying by the pool casually upending Tom’s summer.

Harry deserves to work.

It’s easy to hold back, when he starts to think that something’s missing. Thoughts of Harry between Meri’s legs, of Ben’s face as he succumbs to Harry’s velvety summer-hot mouth, would have been miserable yesterday, but now Tom wants to know what it’s like. The steady, even pull of Harry’s mouth is smoothing out Tom’s snarled mess of want and jealousy, leaving only heat behind. He doesn’t want Harry’s convincing Ben Winston impression. He wants to know what it’s like when Harry uses that mouth of his on Ben, on Meri.

Tom opens his eyes. Harry’s damp curls tumble forward between Tom’s thighs, brushing against his skin. The unmarked plane of his back tapers to the cleft of his arse. Tom imagines Ben watching the shift of Harry’s shoulder blades from the same vantage point. “This how you suck Ben too?”

Tom’s ready to return Harry’s intense stare when Harry lifts his face toward him. But he can’t help how his breath catches when Harry sucks hard at the head before letting Tom’s cock fall from his mouth.

“‘Course not,” Harry says, as if the idea offends him. He’s smiling wickedly now, letting his lower lip brush against Tom with each word. “Likes it a bit sloppier, doesn’t he.”

Tom hears the echo of Meri’s whispered instructions. _Get him wet, Tom, make a mess._ He can almost feel her nails scritching against his scalp. Harry swallows Tom down again, and this time his mouth’s wetter, his pace hungrier. Saliva trickles down the crease of Tom’s thigh.

Tom digs his heels into the mattress, futile counterpressure against a staticky swell of crackling heat. He’s about to disintegrate, to evanesce uselessly into the summer breeze, when Harry abruptly pulls off. He looks upward at Tom, his lips shiny and open. The only thing holding Tom back is the possibility that what Harry wants is to watch him fall apart without Harry’s mouth or hands on him, just the weight of his stare.

Harry waits for an excruciating moment, and then slides a damp hand underneath Tom’s balls. Tom’s pulse scrabbles like a cartoon character on a disintegrating cliff. Harry’s breath is cool against Tom’s wet skin, and he keeps his lips a calculated increment away, not quite ghosting against Tom’s cock when he adds, casual as can be, “Likes this, too,” and slides a spit-slick finger downward, pressing and holding it at the center of Tom’s hole as he takes Tom in his mouth again.

Tom’s knees strain open and his head tips back and he comes with a shudder and a noise he can’t bite back. He spills down Harry’s throat thinking of Ben, thinking of Meri, feeling their ghostly presence in the room.

He opens his eyes when Harry’s knees bump his arse, stopping Tom’s slow slump down the headboard. Harry’s inched his way closer, so that there’s no choice but to stare at his cock, insistently hard and wet at the tip and right at Tom’s eye level. Harry could slide right into his mouth, just grab the top of the headboard and fuck into Tom’s face, and Tom’s about to reach up, to circle his hand around the top of Harry’s thigh and pull him in for it. He’s melting into the soft oblivion of this summer-white bed and he wants Harry to pin him there, make him solid again.

But instead of kneeing his way over Tom’s hips, Harry sits back on his heels and spits into his hand, the pop of his lips startling. For a queasy moment Tom expects him to smear the flat of his hand on the sheet, marking his territory with some obscene mixture of saliva and Tom’s come. Then Harry’s hand goes to his own cock instead, and the sight hits Tom like an aftershock of his orgasm, the filthiest and hottest thing he’s ever seen. Harry leans forward, bracing himself with his other hand against the mattress, looming over Tom. The soft skin inside his arm presses against Tom’s ribs and Tom almost expects to feel Harry’s tattoos, as if his skin ought to be sensitive enough for the spiky letters inside Harry’s elbow to scrape him, or the heart to throb wetly against his side.

Harry’s back to where this started, cock in his hand, eyes boring into Tom’s. Tom’s light-headed, his limbs strung together only loosely, and all he can do is stare. He’s more focused on the way Harry’s lips move when Harry asks, low and rough, “What do you do with them?”

“Wha…” Tom can barely form words. His body feels like he left it downstairs by the pool, bones saturated with heat from the flagstones, vision blotchy with midday sun. The slick sound of Harry’s hand at his cock fills the silent house.

“What do you do with them,” Harry repeats, close enough that Tom can feel the warmth of his breath against his face. “Has Ben fucked you?”

With Harry all over him, taking up all the space that Tom’s melting body is leaving behind, it feels less like giving up a secret and more like anchoring himself, staking his own claim. Proving he belongs here, sprawled across these sheets, just as much as Harry does. He can be just as careless, just as wanton. He can own this.

He looks a challenge back at Harry. “The night before you came,” Tom starts, wanting Harry to feel the recency, to know that a week ago this was his territory, but somehow it only writes Harry into the story. “He told me to go down on Meredith.” Heat surges between his splayed hips at the memory. He trails a hand across his stomach, wondering if his spent cock can raise itself. Harry’s knuckles bump against his as Harry hisses a breath between his teeth and wanks himself with long firm strokes.

“Licked her out,” Tom continues, conscious of the flick of his tongue on the L, the way it drags Harry’s eyes down to his mouth. ”Nice and slow.” He draws the words out, lets his lips stay pursed with the ending sound, his muscles echoing what they did to draw in Meri’s clit.

“Yeah,” Harry murmurs, with a moan behind it. His eyes are half-closed but still bright.

“She tastes…” Tom pauses, and tries to match Harry’s casual condescension. “Well, you’d know that, wouldn’t you?” Even if Tom doesn’t understand the game, it still seems possible to leave this bed with a win. With the concussion of his orgasm still ringing in his ears and Harry responsive to every word he says, it feels for a moment like he’s at an advantage.

Harry moans and lets his eyes fall closed for a moment, making Tom wonder what he might be remembering. He wraps his hand around Harry’s hip, thumb pinching the skin at his hipbone.

Harry’s eyes fly open with a gasp. “What did Ben do?”

_Good_ , Tom thinks, _eyes on me_. “Ben got his fingers in me.” Harry exhales a hot breath and quickens his pace. Tom remembers how it felt, Ben spreading him open with one hand, the heel of his palm firm against the same spot where Harry’s knee is pressing into him now. Tom arched his back and rocked between them, straining back against Ben’s fingers, then forward into Meri’s rich wetness.

“Tell me how it felt.” Harry leans closer, closer. The tip of his cock smears wetly against Tom and Harry’s curled fingers press into Tom’s belly again and again as his hand slides up and down its length.

“You don’t need me to tell you that, do you?” Harry’s close enough to kiss him, but Tom knows he won’t. He stays out of reach in his own way, holding details outside of Harry’s grasp, turning Harry’s questions back on him. “Ben’s fucked you, hasn’t he? Right here, right in this bed?” He realizes he’s digging his fingers into Harry where he’s still holding him by the hip. Maybe they’ll leave a mark, pay Harry back for the one that’s smarting inside Tom’s thigh.

“Yeah,” Harry gasps, and pulls back out of Tom’s grasp, sitting up on his heels. He reaches a hand up to rake his damp hair back from his sweat-beaded forehead, and for a split second he’s all torso, long lines funneling down to where his leafy tattoos frame his other hand furiously working at his cock. He falls forward onto one hand again. “Right here,” he adds in a rough whisper, and comes, the hot droplets puddling in the hollow of Tom’s ribcage, echoing the white of the sheets, sizzling against his skin.

Harry collapses on his back next to Tom, hitting the mattress with a bounce. He leaves one leg twined over Tom’s. Tom lets himself slide bonelessly the rest of the way down the headboard. When his back’s flat against the mattress, Harry’s heel settles in the bend of Tom’s knee, an oddly gentle connection. Tom closes his eyes and tries to collect himself as the pace of Harry’s breathing gradually slows. As the adrenaline dissipates and the charge of his orgasm drains out of his bones, the only thing that stops him from falling asleep is the faint breeze from the window, uncomfortably cooling the mess on his stomach.

Tom thinks idly that he should wipe it off, and then wonders how he’s going slide off the bed without getting anything on the sheet. The thought of the crisp white sheet underneath him hits like opening the door of the refrigerator, replacing the summer haze he’s in with chilly reality. He’s lolling around, sated and sex-dumb, in his bosses’ bed. Maybe Harry gets privileges here, but this is Tom’s _job_. Ben and Meredith are his _employers_ , no matter how many times he’s gotten off with them on the side. How could he possibly have thought it was acceptable to get his dick sucked in his bosses’ bed the moment they leave town?

He props himself up on his elbows, careful not to roll to the side. What kind of power does Harry have, for Tom to walk willingly into this trap? Harry’s presence suddenly seems ominous next to him. What kind of power has Tom _let him_ have? A cold rush of dread raises goosebumps on his bare back. How delusional, trying to go toe to toe with Harry when Harry’s got all the power here. Harry’s going to _tell them_ , and Tom’s going to have to leave this job, this house, in disgrace. “I shouldn’t have…” He knocks Harry’s ankle aside and swings his legs over the side of the bed. 

Behind him, he hears Harry’s joints pop. “What are you on about?” Harry says lazily.

Tom looks over his shoulder at him. Harry’s mid-stretch, toes pointed toward the foot of the bed and hands linked above his head, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. “I….” Tom gestures wordlessly at him, at the bed, at the duvet that’s been messily shoved off the foot of it. It should be perfectly evident what a bad idea this is for Tom, even if Harry’s got nothing to worry about. _I work here. It’s my job. I could get fired._ All of it messily overlaps with what Harry said earlier, when he needled Tom about the contours of his employment.

Harry smirks at him. “Are you worried?”

The condescension rankles, but Tom keeps his tone steady. “How could I not be?” He can’t afford to have Harry mad at him. He could make the rest of the summer unbearable, dangling this over Tom’s head, keeping Tom constantly wondering if Harry’s about to turn him in to Ben and Meredith.

Harry slithers to his feet to pad across the room and scoop up his abandoned towel from the floor. Tom watches his narrow hips as he bends over, recognizing the mark from his fingers at the top of Harry’s arse. Harry could show that to Ben. Evidence. His stomach twists.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about.” Harry turns back toward the bed and throws the towel at Tom. “They’re only going to be mad we didn’t wait for them to watch.”

Tom flinches and catches the towel just before it hits him in the face. “What?” The heavy fabric is clammy in his hands.

Harry’s rummaging in the dresser. “Think you can pretend next time’s the first?” He pulls out a pair of Ben’s boxers and steps into them. The elastic hangs low and loose around his hips.

“...next time?” Tom’s only tentatively reconsidering the possibility that he hasn’t lost. The idea that this isn’t a one-and-done, winner-take-all contest is even harder to get his head around. Best of three? Of seven? Some kind of round robin tournament? He wipes numbly at his chest, already tacky where Harry’s mess has started to dry.

Harry smirks and gathers the waistband of Ben’s pants in one hand to stop them from slipping down. His room’s practically right across the hall. There’s probably a dozen pairs of pants in one of those expensive cases. “They’ll want to think it was their idea.”

_What if it was_. Tom can’t figure out if any of his impulses, any of his decisions, are his own.

“Unless you want to be punished...” Harry leans against the doorframe on his way out, leering at Tom.

The rulebook’s more intricate than Tom suspected, and he’s competing without having read it. He curls his fingers around the edge of the mattress. There’s a month of summer left. The possibilities unfold before him, tantalizing and dangerous.

Harry stares at Tom like he’s reading his mind, biting the inside of his cheek so the line of his lips gathers in. “Ben’s good at that too,” he adds before disappearing from view. His footsteps creak down the hall, leaving Tom alone on the edge of the white bed in the empty room.

 

**Author's Note:**

> always in port on [tumblr](http://ferryboatpeak.tumblr.com/), come talk funkirk to me. if you like meta, here's [the dreamwidth post](https://ferryboatpeak.dreamwidth.org/10566.html) where i talked myself into writing this.


End file.
